It was early in the evening, Sunday, February 28, 1943, and I had come to see a client who had asked me to meet him at the Mozambique. I said I could, and he had started to give me directions; I cut him off and told him I knew the place, knew it well.

The Mozambique was dark and heavy with the same smell of alcohol and tired lust it had a decade ago. Two couples sat at one of the white-and-red-checkered tables in front of the bandstand, where a bored-looking old guy who looked like Clifton Webb was playing a pretty damned good boogie-woogie version of "There's a Breeze on Lake Louise." At the table next to the two couples, who were laughing like phony ex-tras, a trio of uniformed sailors sat nursing Gobel beers and won-dering whether they should pay attention to Clifton Webb or swap prewar stories. Two of the sailors were about ten years old and probably didn't have any stories but the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The third sailor was a lot older. In fact, if he could act, he probably had a good shot at playing Sheridan Whiteside in a road-company production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. Seaman Whiteside was doing the talking.

The red-leatherette booths along the wall to my right were empty except for a guy in the far corner, hidden in the shadows and smoking. The bar was long, dark wood shined like a mirror from hell, the pride of Lester Gannett, who owned the place and poured the drinks. I was sure that when I last saw him four years earlier Gannett had been leaning on the bar the way he was now. But back then he hadn't been pouring something amber from a bottle into the tumbler of a little girl made up like someone's bad idea of a lady of the evening. The kid in the army air-corps uniform next to her smiled and looked at Lester in the hope of getting some acknowledgment of his good luck at landing this infant version of Lana Turner.